Councilor sounds the alarm in Lowell on non-emergency fire signals

LOWELL -- Last May, the city put out a request for proposals seeking a company to monitor the non-emergency signals that wireless fire-alarm boxes send to the city's dispatch center.

The city sought an outside firm for the job because dispatchers complained they did not always have time to acknowledge receiving the signals identifying maintenance issues with an alarm system and notifying property owners of them.

Eight months later, the city has yet to bring on a private firm to monitor the non-emergency signals, and the question of whether the city's current setup maximizes public safety is drawing renewed scrutiny.

The alerts, also known as "nonfire" signals, identify issues with fire-alarm systems that need addressing, such as problems with water flow in a sprinkler system or a low battery.

City Councilor Rodney Elliott, a member of the council's public-safety subcommittee, said he is concerned that nonfire signals are not receiving the attention they deserve and that the city has moved slowly to rectify the issue.

At last Tuesday's council meeting, Elliott said if the city does not notify a property owner that his alarm system has an issue, there is the danger that the system would not be fixed and would fail during a fire at the property. He called the potential scenario a "safety hazard."

"I don't want to place anyone's life at risk," said Elliott, who is calling for the city to address the issue quickly.

The full council approved his motion asking City Manager Bernie Lynch for an update about the process of hiring a private company to monitor the alerts.

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T.J. Cooper, a city dispatcher and president of the union representing dispatchers, Local 1705, told The Sun last summer that she does not believe city dispatchers trying to respond to the nonfire signals is ideal for public safety.

During busy shifts, hundreds of the signals can come into the dispatch center, which either are silenced or tie up employees who could be focused on more pressing issues, Cooper said.

Asked last week about the nonfire signals, Cooper said the status and her opinion about the issue remains the same. She said the dispatchers still often don't have time to alert property owners of the alerts.

Lynch and a top police official said they agree that the city needs to bring in an outside company to handle the nonfire signals to alleviate dispatcher workload issues. But they disputed the public-safety impact of the status quo.

Lynch said the old Gamewell telegraph-wire alarm system, which the city has encouraged property owners to move away from, never sent nonfire signals to the city's dispatch center, which was not a concern. The manager also emphasized that the signals indicating a potential fire always receive the full attention of dispatchers.

"People should be assured there is no threat to public safety, because we are in the same place we were a few years ago," Lynch said.

The Police Department oversees the dispatch center. As of last fall, there were a little more than 300 wireless fire boxes in the city.

Deputy Police Superintendent Deborah Friedl acknowledged there are times when dispatchers have to focus on more pressing needs than the nonfire signals coming in, but added that property owners often have someone fixing their alarm systems without waiting for dispatchers to alert them to a problem.

"The signal coming to us is not what everyone is waiting for to know they have to do maintenance on their equipment," she said.

Deputy Fire Chief Phil Lemire, head of the city's fire-prevention bureau, said he also supports having a third party monitor the nonfire signals, but declined to comment on the safety of the current setup.

The National Fire Protection Association leaves it up to municipalities whether they receive the nonfire signals, also known as supervisory signals, and how to handle them.

Ken Willette, division manager of the agency's public fire-protection division, said the value of nonfire signals is that they let someone outside of the building where an alarm system is located know if there is a problem with the system.

Whoever receives the signal, be it a municipal dispatcher or a third party's employee, can then alert the property owner or his representative of the problem. That can help ensure that the issue will be fixed and the alarm system will operate effectively in all circumstances, Willette said.

"If you do have an emergency, you want to know if the fire-alarm system is going to work properly," Willette said.

Lynch said city officials have met in recent weeks to talk about switching to a third party to monitor the nonfire alerts, and one reason the process to switch over has dragged on is cost.

Before a third-party, central-monitoring station can monitor the signals, the city's wireless-alarm system has to be reprogrammed, which Lynch said will cost the city about $50,000.

Lowell is investigating different options to pay for both the upfront reprogramming costs and annual monitoring costs, Lynch added.

The company that installed the city's wireless-alarm system for $77,849, East Coast Security Services of Salem, N.H., is expected to be brought on through a separate request for proposals put out last May to do the reprogramming work.

Lynch said one company has put in a bid to do the monitoring work. He did not identify the company, but The Sun previously reported that Mammoth Fire Alarms of Lowell had submitted a proposal.

It remains unclear whether property owners with the wireless fire boxes will have to pay an annual monitoring fee.

The City Council voted 5-4 in September to defeat Mayor Patrick Murphy's motion seeking to have property owners with the wireless fire boxes pay the annual $275 monitoring fee called for by a 2009 council vote.

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